Every World of Warcraft player associates themselves with a class. Even if they may have a clade of alternate characters to their name, you can put them against a wall and make them pick one. For me, it is the Warlock, a damage-oriented class who works through indirect means such as demonic pets and damage-over-time spells that slowly chip away at your health. On World of Warcraft’s launch day – November 24, 2004 – I rolled a Gnome Warlock. My main character on September 26, 2010, is a Gnome Warlock.

So: I just want to say quickly that I’ve been acting the beta tester on the PTR and getting to grips with some of the really fucking awesome changes in the pipelines for the class:

The Infernal and Doomguard become Warlock-class Spirit Wolves, oriented for Player versus Player and Player versus Monster combat, respectively.

New, extra, pet abilities. I haven’t played with them all yet, but my Felguard’s Felstorm is just pure (insanely overpowered, currently) fun. Combine it with Bane of Agony”. I can now cast it alongside Curse of Shadows. No more having to gimp my own damage output in a raid!

The brand-new, out of combat spell, Soul Harvest is an excellent self-heal.

It’s all good, really. Maybe my biggest gripe with the player test realm is that in instances we burn through mobs so fast that it becomes very hard to roll out my full spell catalogue and get the most out of my character. That hasn’t changed: Warlocks are powerful, but we take a while go get started.

Problem #30 was solved on new ground: my first run through Project Euler was in rigid order of first to last ending at #25. The recent round of solutions mostly cover old ground, which works well for ...